YouTube Gears Up for New Premium Channels (But Would You Pay $5 a Month to Watch Them?)

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Rick Aristotle Munarriz has been a Motley Fool contributor since 1995, specializing in tech and consumer stocks. He's been part of the analyst team for the Motley Fool Rule Breakers newsletter service since its 2004 launch, serving as portfolio lead for the real-money Motley Fool Supernova service since its 2012 debut. Beyond amassing close to 20,000 bylines in that time, Rick still finds the time to tend to his collection of travel and entertainment websites through Siteclopedia.com and perform improvisational comedy at Miami's Just The Funny.
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Tollbooths may be coming to YouTube, but don't panic: The freeway should remain open.

AdAge is reporting that Google (GOOG) is reaching out to some of its more prolific content producers to create premium channels. The first wave of channels would charge viewers between $1 and $5 apiece every month for exclusive content.

Google has tried to turn its popular video website into a commercial platform before. It has offered piecemeal rentals for streams of both indie and major Hollywood films with limited success.

It could be different this time, especially if YouTube is able to round up top entertainment brands or some of its larger channel partners in time for the springtime launch.

More Than 4 Billion (Hours) Served

The push for premium content seems to go against the company's success as a wholly free streaming website. YouTube is now serving more than 4 billion hours of content a month. For those scoring at home, that is four times greater than what premium streaming video leader Netflix (NFLX) is delivering.

Last week's quarterly report also had some interesting nuggets in terms of the success of advertising on YouTube.

YouTube's 25 largest advertisers are now spending an average of more than $150 million a year on the site. Remember PSY's Gangnam Style video? The infectious South Korean pop video alone has generated more than $8 million in all-in advertising revenue.

The ad-supported YouTube seems to be more than enough to satisfy popular content creators and Google's marketing-magnetic coffers. Shareholders are certainly pleased. Google shares hit a new all-time high late last year.

Diversifying its revenue mix by appealing to steady subscriptions is interesting in theory, but it's certainly not necessary.

The First Class Curtain is a Killer

In the spirit of full disclosure, I've been part of the YouTube Partners program since 2009. My fledgling Moonpies channel has more than 12,000 subscribers and nearly 4 million video views. I didn't receive an invitation to create a premium channel, and I certainly don't expect one. I'm too small. I can't fathom anyone paying for my clips.

However, there are certainly plenty of talented YouTubers out there that would be worth a modest subscription if that was the only way to gain access to their content. Netflix, Hulu, and now even Amazon.com (AMZN) are investing in original programming that premium subscribers can only watch through their platforms. Why can't YouTube join the party?

Unfortunately, there are bigger questions than that which need to be answered: Will YouTube users be turned off by tiered access? Will they flock to smaller streaming sites where all of the content is available for free? Will the content creators generate enough subscription revenue to offset what they would be making through the current ad-supported model?

Obviously Google has thought these questions through if it's going forward with this as reported by AdAge. The only thing that we can now do is watch -- and hope that we don't have to pay for that privilege.